December 31, 2026 Layoffs: 422 Workers Across Three WARN Filings Share One Effective Date

New Year's Eve is shaping up to be a notable date on the 2026 layoff calendar. Three separate WARN filings — in Washington, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — all list December 31, 2026 as their effective date, covering 422 workers between them. Each filing comes from a different industry and a different stated reason, but they share the same scheduled end-of-year date.

These are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN effective date is the date an employer says the employment loss is scheduled to occur. Plans can change, and an employer can postpone, extend, or cancel a layoff after filing, with additional notice where the law requires it.

The three filings

Starbucks, SeaTac, Washington — 135 workers. The newest of the three filings, with a notice date of October 23, 2026 and an effective date of December 31, 2026. The record is a Washington state filing for a SeaTac location, and it is the largest of the recent filings on the national registry's front page.

Pep Boys (Manny Moe & Jack, LLC), Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania — 169 workers. The notice, dated September 23, 2026 and filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, covers a corporate layoff at 1 Presidential Blvd, Suite 400, in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County. The filing lists December 31, 2026 as the effective date, with phases running through about February 18. The layoff follows a reorganization of corporate support services after Mavis Tire's acquisition of Pep Boys closed in August 2026. The filing reports no union representation and no bumping rights.

The Washington Post, Springfield, Virginia — 118 workers. The notice, dated October 7, 2026, covers a Springfield, Virginia filing effective December 31, 2026. It is the largest of the three filings by notice age and the most recent Virginia filing of its size on the registry.

Together: 135 + 169 + 118 = 422 workers.

Why one date can carry several filings

A shared effective date does not mean the layoffs are connected. Employers choose effective dates for their own reasons — a lease ending, a facility closing, a reorganization taking effect, or a fiscal calendar turning over. What the shared date does show is how WARN data clusters: because filings are reported by effective date, a single calendar day can accumulate workers from unrelated employers in unrelated states.

December 31 is not the heaviest single date on the current calendar. That distinction belongs to December 20, 2026, when 934 workers are scheduled across three filings: Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream (803 workers, Howard County, Maryland), DSquared Hospitality (83 workers, Bellevue, Washington), and Republic Amusements (48 workers, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania). December 1, 2026 carries at least 176 workers across two Pennsylvania closures: Ask Foods (96 workers, Palmyra) and The Pavilion at Bradford (80 workers).

Read together, December's calendar shows a pattern worth noting: the month's scheduled losses are concentrated on a handful of specific dates rather than spread evenly across the month.

December 31 in the national picture

The current national window, updated October 25, 2026, covers 704 notices affecting 66,156 reported workers, with 33 notices where worker counts are unavailable. Washington (17,073 workers) and California (14,224) lead the state ranking, followed by Illinois (4,626), Texas (3,652), and Ohio (3,180).

The 422 workers scheduled for December 31 represent a small share of that national total — roughly 0.6 percent. The figure matters less as a share of the total than as a reminder of how the calendar works: the heaviest upcoming weeks are in mid-November (7,781 workers effective the week of November 15), while December's impact arrives in concentrated single-day clusters.

The upcoming weeks, by effective date, are: October 25: 5,206 workers; November 1: 4,565; November 8: 5,311; November 15: 7,781; November 22: 6,527; and November 29: 5,832.

How to read the December 31 number

Three cautions apply to this figure, as they do to every WARN total:

• Effective dates are scheduled, not final. Employers can change a layoff date after filing. A postponement of less than 60 days requires additional notice; a longer postponement is treated as a new notice.
• Phased layoffs blur single-day counts. The Pep Boys filing is effective December 31 but phases through about February 18, so not all 169 workers necessarily leave on the same day.
• Counts exclude unavailable figures. Worker totals in this article include only workers with reported counts. Notices with unavailable counts are not counted as zero; they are simply not included.

For workers at any of these three employers, the practical next steps are the same as for any WARN filing: confirm the filing with the state labor agency, contact the state's Rapid Response team for free transition help, and check unemployment-benefit timing before the effective date arrives.

Data source: Layoff Atlas